Forsaah of the Sheikah
by Arrowwood15
Summary: Forsaah is assigned a difficult task: defend the Shadow Temple and stop anything from going in... or coming out. Rated T for dark themes.
1. Chapter 1

The setting sun glinted off the rooftops of Kakariko Village. The place was still bustling at this time of evening. But in a few short hours, everyone would shut themselves up in their homes. Dinner would be served; final chores completed; children put to bed. Silence would fall over Kakariko. Everyone would be asleep, comfy and safe in their beds.

Except for Forsaah.

She would be spending the night standing in front of the Shadow Temple, naginata gripped tightly in hand, constantly glancing behind her at the entrance. It sloped down…

Down into a pit where few ever returned from.

And those who did were never the same.

The temple housed shadow spirits, secrets, and horrors untold. And Forsaah was in charge of guarding the place all night, every night. Making sure nothing got in.

Or out.

It's not like she wasn't prepared if something did. She had spent years mastering magic that could defend her against…whatever was in there. And she could sound an alarm if she saw anything. Hundreds of skilled warriors would come, riding their shadowsteeds, and fight it.

Assuming it didn't destroy them all in one fell swoop.

 _Stop it,_ Forsaah told herself. _The temple is getting to you. Nothing ever leaves the temple. It's always quiet._

Even so, her hand tightened on her naginata.

"A bit nervous tonight, are we?" said a voice somewhere in front of her.

Forsaah's heartrate went through the roof and she instinctively swung her weapon in a wide arc, summoning a blue light in about a ten-yard radius around her.

An old, one-eyed man hobbled into view. "Did I startle you, young one?" he asked.

She lowered her weapon. "I apologize, elder." She bowed respectfully to her elder. "The spirits of the temple were making my paranoia…extreme."

"It's quite all right, Forsaah." Penum was the village elder. He was and ancient, gnarled treestump of a man. Some said he lost his eye in a fight with a shadow spirit. But he always said it was in a fight with a horde of cuccos. In any case, it was said that with his one, abnormally blue eye, very unlike the crimson eyes of everyone else, he could see the truth.

"If I may ask, elder, why you are up at this time?" Forsaah said as respectfully as she could.

"Ah, straight to business as always, eh, Forsaah?" Penum chuckled. "I just wanted to check on you."

"I…I see."

"Also, you know, the spirits in there seem a bit… jumpy tonight, don't they?"

Forsaah's heartrate escalated to 200 miles per hour after that comment. 'Jumpy' shadow spirits?

No. Thanks.

"You seem the same way, Forsaah."

"Um…well…"

"Oh, its fine. I'd feel the same way too if I had to stay out here every night. And I was around when this temple had a purpose other than sittin' round lookin' creepy and ominous."

This piqued her curiosity. "You were?"

He let out a chuckle, which resonated into the dark. "Oh yes. I was young, remember, but I was there," his voice dropped to a whisper. "That place was used as a sort of prison, you see. It was supposed to be for those of us who chose to betray the Royal Family. Why they would ever do _that_ is beyond me. But they did, and they tossed 'em into that there temple. No one knows what happened, but no one escaped the prison. Some say it was a torture chamber. Some say they were kept in solitude until they went crazy. Some say that the spirits of past prisoners whispered to them through the doors. Most of the prisoners just turned into harmless poltergeists, wandering the temple forever, but some, they say, were so evil that when they died, they morphed into creatures so terrible that no one would be able to lay eyes on them."

Forsaah couldn't help but glance back at the temple entrance behind her at this point.

"But after the Hyrulean Civil war, and our people grew scarce, eventually diminishing into this one community, they stopped using it, and the temple fell silent. But they say, that if the spirits were to escape, they would end the Sheikah. For good."

She let out her breath, which she had no idea she had been holding.

"Thanks for listenin' to me, young'un. I appreciate it." He said, his voice returning to normal.

"Yes…of course…."

And with that, she heard the old man's footsteps moving away into the darkness.

This was going to make her job _so_ much easier.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun rose over the mountains, casting pinkish rays of light across Kakariko. A bird started softly singing somewhere, and soon a whole chorus joined in.

It was funny how quickly the day started, and how slowly the night ended. Forsaah had spent the last few hours of the night fending off stalfos. Nothing serious. The little skeletons came every night, and attempted to get into the temple, probably to grow from its power and turn into not-so-little skeletons that came every night. But a wave of magic or a quick swipe from a naginata would send then scurrying back to wherever they came from.

Forsaah did enjoy the challenge of fending off the stalfos and watching the temple at the same time, because once you got over the initial paranoia in the beginning of the night, the actual job was pretty boring.

You just stood there. Staring at the village, listening to the crickets. Occasionally Forsaah would hear the sentries apprehending a rogue, escaped prisoner, or a wandering monster. And that could sometimes prove interesting.

But when the job got _really_ boring, Forsaah just reminded herself that she was contributing to the very survival of the Sheikah by defending the temple. It may not be a very serious situation _now,_ but if there was no one defending the place during the night…

She shuddered. That was not something she wanted to think about.

Now the sun was just over the mountains, and the most dreaded monster of all would come to challenge her.

 _Children._

Yes, this time in early morning was before their parents were awake and they had no chores. So they would come and play. Or in some cases, come to tick her off. But Forsaah never lost her temper to those… nuisances.

And they weren't all nuisances. Some were actually quite intelligent. In particular, the daughter of the village leader.

Her name was Impa. And she wasn't quite like the other children. While the others were quick and curious, she was sort of shy and withdrawn. But there was an understanding of the world in her deep crimson eyes. When the other children, after tugging on Forsaah's braid and asking questions like, "how come your hair is all white and shiny and ours is blonde?" or "is there any monsters in Panem's house?", Impa would almost always walk up to Forsaah and look up at her. Sometimes she would just look at her until Forsaah was thoroughly uncomfortable. And other times she would say something like, "would you betray the royal family?"

Forsaah didn't like that one bit.

But this morning, Impa was nowhere to be found. All the other children were out except her.

Odd.

Forsaah put up with the children for about 30 minutes, and then told them she had some important grown-up stuff to do.

But that, she meant she was going to beat up some training targets for a while.

After she finished with the targets (most had shadow daggers sticking out of them and some had been beheaded) she glanced around the village. The training area was on a ledge on top of a hill that overlooked Kakariko. Impa still didn't seem to be out. Hmm.

Maybe she was being overly paranoid, but she climbed down the hill to ask the village leader about Impa.

It never hurt to check.


	3. Chapter 3

Or, at least, that's what she _thought_ she would do. As soon as she got halfway down the hill, she froze. Something…something was…whispering. The voice sounded like it came from deep within her skull, an ancestral memory awakening. What was it?

It was definitely coming from the direction of the temple. No surprise there. The temple was always whispering, sending out strange signals, and shifting around. The whole interior was like an eagle caught in a birdcage: too big for the place, and constantly wriggling and sliding in discomfort. The physical part of the temple was actually tiny compared to what the real incorporeal place must look like. Probably beyond human-or Hylian-or Sheikah- comprehension.

But this was interesting. The whisper wasn't quite as wretched and cruel as the other ones. In fact, she wasn't even sure anymore if it was the temple making it. It was inside the temple, but it was almost…

A plea for help.

The realization that should have come to her a few minutes sooner hit her like a well-aimed spear to the chest. Of course. _Impa._ How could she not have realized it?

She took off at a sprint toward the temple. Her heart hammering in her chest was like the beating of war drums as she passed all the houses, of all the adults who were still blissfully unaware of the tragedy that could possibly be unfolding in front of her, no, _around_ her, _inside her_.

But, even at her top speed, when she reached the entrance to that temple, she stopped dead in her tracks, facing that dark entrance, which descended into the chaos and evil that was the Shadow Temple.

She exhaled slowly through her nostrils. _Get ahold of yourself, Forsaah,_ she thought as loudly as she could in her head. _You are a Sheikah Warrior. You are entering that place on your own will. Just think of the child…_ She closed her eyes. She had been guardian of the temple for so long, she was able to sense the happenings of magic around the temple. Ah, yes. A few minutes ago, a monster from the temple- some sort of long, versatile tendril- had whipped out of the darkness and snagged its prey. She couldn't _see_ any of this, but she could _feel_ it. The prey…it had struggled, put up a good fight, actually. Definitely a pure-blooded Sheikah. But in the end, it had been dragged backwards, into the darkness.

"Where are you going?" asked a voice just behind her.

Forsaah nearly leaped out of her skin and whipped around faster than a ticked-off wolfos. And then relaxed instantly.

It was one of the village children, Angui, Forsaah thought his name was. Nothing to be afraid of. But a bit of a nuisance. Now she would have to get him to not run off and tell everyone where she was going- surely some ancient law forbid what she was doing, and of course Panem or maybe Itzal, the village leader, would know about it.

"I am…well..." Forsaah struggled to find words.

"Were you about to go into the temple?" Angui asked without missing a beat.

Stupid observant children.

"N…no…" She replied weakly.

He looked up at Forsaah with those big, adoring crimson eyes. "Yes you were."

"N…. yes…"

"Oh, okay then!" He said cheerfully. "But do you think it's a good idea to go alone?"

"Yes…"

"Okay! You're the expert. Don't worry; I won't tell. I know you have some important business to attend to in there or something." He pronounced _business_ boos-ness, which, Forsaah had to admit, was kind of adorable.

Without saying another word, Angui bowed to Forsaah, turned around, and walked off.

She stood there for a whole minute blinking incredulously, before she realized that she was wasting time and that every moment she spent looking stupid, Impa could be in more and more danger.

 _Sheikah Warrior. Sheikah Warrior._

She dispelled the barrier.

 _Warrior. Warrior._

She took the first step.

 _Sheikah. Sheikah._

Without knowing why, she sprinted into the temple without looking back, descending into the darkness. She moved away from the light outside, and she wasn't sure if she would ever be able to see it again.


	4. Chapter 4

It was dark in that temple. _Very_ dark.

Forsaah couldn't see three feet in front of her and, being trained in _shadow_ magic, summoning a black flame probably wouldn't help at all, would it? She inwardly sighed. She should've come more prepared. She should've brought some kind of torch or-or something.

She stopped. No. She couldn't go back. Not now. She started this. She had to complete it. If she left the temple now, all that honor, hard-earned over years, would all go to waste.

And a child's life.

Forsaah was trying to block out the appearance of the place. She had heard stories about what it would do to your sanity if you gazed for too long on it. Instead, she tried to sense Impa. She had to be somewhere. Her presence was faint, probably within the depths of the temple, but easily distinguishable from…from the other presences. There were a lot.

As she walked in silence, all she could hear was the echo of her footsteps and the scraping of her gloved hand against the wall as she felt her way around. The first part seemed to just be one long hallway. She hadn't seen any turns, and even if she didn't see them, she had her hand on the wall, so surely she would feel empty space and-

The fear was beginning to settle in now. She found herself glancing behind her. One of the times she was doing this, she felt her right hand dip into a crevice. She stopped and turned her head. It was the symbol of her people, but with a distorted, gruesome, smiling face where the iris should be. She was so startled she flattened herself against the opposite wall. She tried to sink into it when it started to speak.

It had a sing-song tone. "The shadow only yields to eyes of truth! Not to those naked and uncouth!"

Forsaah bit her lip. She wasn't quite sure what to make of all this. Someone with eyes of truth…agh! It was so hard to think when Din's hellspawn was staring at her!

 _Eyes of truth. Eyes of truth. Eyes of tru-_

"You needed me quicker than expected."

Forsaah twisted around so fast at this she probably gave herself whiplash. Standing about five feet away, just within her range of vision, was Panem.

"Panem!" she cried. "What in the name of the sacred golden goddesses are you doing here?!"

The old man smiled infuriatingly. "Just helping out a friend." Then he walked up to the face. Its eyes rotated to look at him, which made Forsaah shrink like a frightened shadowsteed. She wanted so badly to find a goron and throw it at that face as hard as she could. Not only was it terrifying, it disrespected a symbol sacred to her people. How dare demons stoop that low!

"All right, I see what you are. No use hiding it anymore. My, though, you traveled a while, didn't you?"

He reached out and laid his hand on the face, right in the center. It shimmered, and disappeared, revealing a…

A skull kid.

It giggled and danced in a circle, then disappeared into a pile of leaves. The lovely Kokiri leaves looked out of place in a dark, miserable temple like this. As she watched, they all shriveled and died on the spot, turning into dust. That was the effect the magic of this place had on most people. Kokiri in particular. Actually…

"Now that there, Forsaah," said Panem, gesturing to where the skull kid was, "was a Kokiri that wandered into this temple, and was corrupted by the shadows." He started to walk down the hall that had opened up now that the barrier had disappeared.

She jogged after him. "How would a Kokiri end up in this temple? I thought they could never leave the forest."

He chuckled, a noise all too familiar at this point. "They're perfectly capable. They just have been taught otherwise." He glanced back at Forsaah. "Now, come on. We have more important things to be worrying about than Hyrulean history. Impa is depending on us. Pick up the pace, child!"

He kept going, further and further into the darkness. Forsaah had no choice but to follow.

 _Hmm. Well. You know what the Lon Lon farmers always say…_ She mentally put on her best impression of the rowdy folk, so unlike the honorable Sheikah.

 _A little bit o' nothin's better than a whole lot o' nothin'!_


End file.
